Catching Donna
by PrairieDawn
Summary: At the end of her life, Donna needs her Doctor.


Author's note: This was the best I could do for Donna without tacking on a fixit. If you can't guess the identity of Dr. Sullivan, you won't care, just ignore it. It was a continuity issue for me.

* * *

"Hello, Martha, it's been forever!" The Doctor turned around to lean against the Tardis console, legs casually crossed. "How have you been?"

There was an uncomfortably long silence on the other end of the line. "Donna needs you."

The Doctor leapt up to pace the control room. "I can't see Donna. You know that. It will kill her."

"Donna's dying. Lymphoma. She has...days at most." He froze, his nervous energy evaporating. His legs wanted to dump him to the floor. He fumbled for a seat. It shouldn't bother him so much, to know she was, at whatever point in time Martha was calling, about to die. He had visited times during the span of her life, times before she was born, times after she would surely have been gone. Routinely.

Martha pressed on in the face of his silence. "Doctor, she knows she's missing months of her life. She's been told that she had an extraordinary experience, but was injured, and lost her memory. She knows the memory can be restored, and she knows that the knowledge will kill her. She wants to go ahead."

"No, Martha, don't." He trailed off. He had no good reason, except his own desire not to open old wounds.

"Doctor, she had an amazing life. Extraordinary. You should know the person she became. And when she remembers, you should be here for her. You owe her that."

"I don't know."

Martha continued. "We'll wait as long as we can. We have some support for her, and I will be here with her for as long as she holds out. It's a done deal. August third, 2029. Braden Road hospice, outside London. It will happen whether you're here or not."

"I'll try."

"She said...all she wanted was to die someplace beautiful. With mountains, and snow."

"I said I'll try." His voice came out unintentionally harsh.

The connection broke. They shouldn't have said anything to her, but he supposed she had asked, and they'd had to come up with something. There had never really been any question as to whether he would come. The universe owed her its life. One visit surely wasn't too much to ask. He dialed in the coordinates, confident for once that the Tardis would take him exactly where and when he intended to go.

He arrived just outside the building, in the stifling heat of an August afternoon. He crunched across the sun burned grass to the door of an aging, but cared for building that utterly failed not to look like a nursing home. He didn't visit the mid twenty-first century often. It struck him as crowded and shabby, a century of making do and holding on for better times.

The woman at the front desk was wearing a bright, summery dress that aggressively denied being scrubs. "Hello, would you mind signing in? Your name and who you're here to see."

The Doctor signed a name, John Smith, into the register. Now was not the time to risk being tossed out for being coy. Donna Temple-Noble, he wrote on the register. "A Doctor John Smith?" The woman who was pretending not to be a nurse said. "She's in the sunroom, with some friends. You're expected." At his pause, she pointed the way.

He couldn't help but feel that his steps measured the remaining minutes of her life, and the thought tempted him to dawdle. Martha met him in the hallway. "Doctor?"

"It's still me. New face, that's all." Not quite all, but now was not the time for lengthy explananations.

Martha gestured to him to follow her. "She was resetting several times a year, every time something reminded her of you. Fortunately, we've had help from the Herald Foundation to stabilize the block."

"Herald Foundation," he repeated, numbly. "Doctor Sullivan? Is she here?"

"Back in the States. She just had a baby girl. Scout Thea." Martha made a face he interpreted as disapproval, presumably of the baby's name. She had aged, but not in a bad way. The years had added character to her expression. Weight. She looked like someone accustomed to be taken seriously. "Do you know what Donna did with all that money she won? Went to grad school. Got an MBA. She spent her life traveling the world solving thorny problems for corporations and governments. Super Temp, she calls herself."

He followed Martha to where Donna reclined in a wheelchair. Her mane of red hair was gone, replaced by a few gray wisps and a coral colored headwrap. She had wasted, grown small and prematurely old. He knelt beside her. "Donna. I'm the Doctor."

"My meds are fine," she said, her voice small but lucid.

He pressed on. "I'd like to take you someplace. With mountains and snow, like you wanted."

She shook her head. "It's too late for that. I have something I need to remember, then I'll be going." She paused to breathe, her chest sucking inward with the effort.

He nodded to Martha. "I'm parked out front. It's not far."

Martha pushed Donna's chair down the hallway, past the front desk, not even waiting to be challenged by the gatekeeper in the pretty dress. The Doctor ran ahead to open the doors of the Tardis wide enough to accomodate the chair.

Martha bent down to whisper something in Donna's ear. She smiled and covered her eyes with her pale hands. An IV tube dangled from one wrist like a pale snake. "I love surprises," he heard her say as she wheeled her into the Tardis.

"Just one more moment," the Doctor told her, while he programmed in new coordinates and started the Tardis into motion. He didn't know for sure if she would survive two minutes or two hours, and he wanted the best chance possible to give her something beautiful to take with her.

"Where are we going?"

"To a world she saved," he answered. The metallic wheeze of the ship surrounded them.

"Oh!" Donna said, delighted. "The Tardis. Doctor! I remember...oh!" She bent double in the chair. He ran over to her to cradle her head in his hands, holding the full metacrisis at bay, while allowing the memories to return, sharing each fragment of her past with her as it reconnected with her present. Her breathing was labored, her temperature beginning to rise already. He kept an arm around her to steady the contact, looking for just the right set of connections to hold, to buy her the most time and allay her suffering. It helped that she had enough opiates in her to knock out a horse.

"I missed you," she said, unnecessarily. The Tardis stilled.

"Martha, open the door."

She threw open the door on an austere, snowy landscape. "Look, Donna! I brought you your mountains." He lifted her out of the chair and into the cold, clear sunlight. She weighed next to nothing in his arms.

"I know this place!" she breathed, almost beyond speech. "Oh, listen! Can you hear it?"

He held her, tears pouring down his face, bathed in the song of the Ood, in their welcome and love. They drew him into their song, and Donna with him. Their voices drew the fire out of her mind, gathered his own gift into their circle and amplified it, so that time stretched, granting the Doctor Donna precious extra minutes to delight in the crisp wind, the glittering snow, and the joy of many souls joined in harmony. Fleetingly, he wondered if he could have saved her, long ago, by bringing her here, but the Ood corrected him gently. They could hold her for a time, carrying the extra weight of Time Lord thought and memory distributed throughout their circle, but there was no way she could have survived intact. He felt another presence on the edge of the circle, one both solemn and delighted, adding her untrained voice to the song. He reached out for Martha, only to find that Donna had already drawn her fully into the circle.

Even stretched to its limit, time cannot stand still. Donna's breath stilled. The circle caught her soul, recorded her memories, both fantastic and mundane, wove her into a semblance of light and music. The circle loosened its hold on Martha and the Doctor, though the song still wove in and out of their minds. The Ood arrived in person, a party of four, as he was laying Donna's body out on the snow. "Martha," he said, his voice cracking, "she should be here, with them. Will you smooth things over with her family?"

Martha nodded. The Ood knelt in a circle, surrounding Donna's shell. He stood in the song for he didn't know how long, until the sun was low in the sky and the wind grew bitter. At last, he returned to the Tardis. Martha was waiting for him inside, with a blanket and a cup of tea. She rubbed her forehead tiredly. "Sorry, I fell asleep for a bit."

He shook his head, denying her apology. "I would have been surprised if you hadn't."

"Home, I think, then," she said.

"Just one trip?" He suggested. "For old times' sake."

"No. Thanks for the offer, but no." She gave his shoulder a collegial squeeze. "But after you drop me off, you ought to visit the Sullivans. Holding a new baby would do you good."

He shrugged and turned away to set the coordinates. No matter how much he tried not to do families, they seemed to grow up around him like wildflowers. He wasn't saying he would stop off in America to pay respects to a newborn child. But he wasn't saying that he wouldn't.


End file.
